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Saxon Monastery Some 1300 years ago Hartlepool was one of the most important religious sites on Northern England. Our single documentary source for the Anglo-Saxon monastery at Hartlepool is in “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People”, which was written at Jarrow in 731 by the monk Bede. According to Bede the monastery at Hartlepool was originally founded by the nun Heiu in the 640’s AD. This monastery was named “…Heruteu, that is, the island of the hart”. When Heiu left in the year 649 Bishop Aidan appointed another nun, Hild, to take over as the head of the monastery. While previous local writers have blamed a Viking raid for destroying the monastery in the early 9 th century, none of the sites excavated shows any signs of a Viking onslaught. Indeed the archaeological evidence leans towards an abandonment as the Northumbrian monasteries fell apart in the political troubles of the late 8 th century. A tantalising glimpse of this abandonment was recently found at the Friarage Field excavation, where a layer of wind-blown sand covered the Saxon layers, showing that the site was abandoned to nature at the end of its life.
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Map reference NZ 520 315
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